The WHO continues to classify the coronavirus pandemic as a global health emergency. The World Health Organization is following the assessment of an 18-member independent committee of experts that reviews the classification every three months, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told media in Geneva on Wednesday.
Vaccination must continue to meet WHO targets, including immunization of all health professionals and anyone at risk. Access to tests and drugs should be improved for those most at risk, Ghebreyesus said.
Ahead of the WHO consultation, the organization’s corona expert, Maria van Kerkhove, said that the situation is better today than at the start of the corona pandemic, but that the available tools such as vaccines or medicines are not being used enough in many places.
Since the end of many corona measures, too little has been tested and too few virus sequences have been determined to get a good picture of the circulating variants. This makes it difficult to see the spread quickly. It should be assumed that new variants are even easier to transfer than previously known ones.
So far, the WHO has recorded 620 million coronavirus infections and 6.5 million deaths worldwide. However, the number of unreported cases is probably much higher because there is little or no testing in many places and the causes of death are not correctly recorded and reported everywhere.
(SDA)